Page 1 of Love Set Free

Chapter One

Phoenix

“Psst. Psst. Hey. Hey you. Are you… Is somebody there?” The voice is a sweet, masculine, low drawl, even with the obvious shaky panic in it. It quiets to a murmur as he pleads, “Oh, please, let there be somebody there.”

I can’t quite place the accent. It seems southernish; not that I’m an expert of accents outside of the various New England states I consider my stomping grounds. It isn’t bringing to mind the sharp twang that comes with guitars, boots, tight jeans, and shitty songs about dead dogs and big-haired, cheating women. No, this voice brings to mind hot, lazy afternoons drinking sweet tea on a veranda. That’s a thing, right? Sweet tea? And I’m pretty sure that verandas are a thing. Like a big porch where you spend time rocking in an old, beat-up chair and swatting away mosquitos.

“Are you… Hey, are you there? Are you awake? Can you talk?” The questions come faster and with an increasing edge of panic.

And need. I can hear the guy’s need for any sort of response loud and clear.

Normally, I wouldn’t give a shit. What did it matter to me, what other people wanted or needed? But something about that voice… And let’s face it, even before I pry open my crusted-shut eyes, I already had the sense that whatever is going on…this isn’t the time for ‘normally’.

“Yeah. I’m here.” The ragged croak of my voice hurts my throat and causes a sharp jab of pain to spear through my head.

Fuck, what sort of bender had I gone on? I couldn’t recall much of anything in the past…the past… Actually, I have no idea how much time I’ve apparently lost to…whatever this is. My last memory is a hazy recall of snapping at the flight crew of my private jet for their feeble and covering-their-own-asses apologies and explanations about some sort of bureaucratic hold-up at the small airport just outside of Rio that was preventing them from immediately unloading my things.

After that…

However much time has passed and whatever has gone down, I am not reassured by what my present circumstances look like once I get my eyes open.

Oh, God. There are bars. Rough, black, metal bars. My eyes flit frantically in every direction, but all I can see are bars. In front of me, next to me, behind me. Bars, bars, and more bars.

The floor…the floor I’m sitting on, well, more like sprawled across, is either made of or covered by a sheet of plywood. While the metal bars look like they’ve weathered their fair share of days, the plywood looks and smells new.

And all I can see, when my panicked eyes look beyond all those bars, is peeling, flaking, dingy and graying paint on cement walls. The walls butt up right against three sides of the metal enclosure—alright, might as well call a cage, a cage—while the one I’m currently facing seems to be further away. Am I… It’s almost like I’m in some sort of cage that’s been placed within an alcove within a larger space.

“Oh, thank God. Who are you? What’s your name? How’d you get here? Do you know where here is? Can you… Are you blindfolded, too?”

I’ve been ignoring the guy’s questions while I take in my surroundings. At least, what all I can see. However, his last question snaps my attention back to him. Because…no. No, I’m not blindfolded. I can’t see much, but I can see something. Is he… Does his question mean thathe’sblindfolded? It must, right?

Not that I’ll be able to know for sure because I can’t see him. I can hear him fairly clearly and he sounds like he’s close by, but wherever it is that he is within this gloomy cement space, I can’t see him.

What the hell is going on here?

But just because his voicesoundswarm and nonthreatening doesn’t mean I’m going to automatically trust this random stranger and give him any sort of honest answer. After all, I have no fucking clue what’s going on.

Although, as the only son of a man who owns more businesses than I care to count and has more personal wealth than many a small country, I have a strong inkling of what a few of the possibilities might be. And there is no way in hell I am going to trustanyoneif what is happening here is what I’m afraid it is. Besides, a lie could give me some sort of intel as to whether this guy is part of the cause of my current problem or an equal in the we’re-really-fucked lottery.

“Yeah, I…I think I am,” I finally answer him, injecting it with a quavering, shaking uncertainty and fear that I, unfortunately, don’t have to fake all that much. “I can’t see a thing.”

There. The lie is out there. Now to see if he takes the bait to either berate me because he knows I’m lying or sounds insincere as he plays along with my lie. Either reaction will show me thathe’s one of the instigators of my situation. Or I’ll see if he sounds truthful as he commiserates with me.

“Ah, day-ahm,” he swears, the drawl of his voice adding all sorts of slow, syrupy syllables to his profanity.

It’s totally not the time or place to be thinking this but, fuck, what I wouldn’t give to have that voice groaning that word to me, in a similar way, across the expanse of a pillow. Obviously, under much better circumstances. The man has a voice straight out of a goddamned sweaty, pulse-pounding, body-writhing, filthy fantasy.

He sighs and I can feel his disappointment in my very bones. “I was hoping you’d be able to see something so you could tell me more about where we’re being held.”

Either he’s a really good actor or else he’s as much a captive as I am, because I don’t hear any sort of disingenuousness in his voice. I let a small ribbon of trust unfurl in my chest. I’m ready to snip it if it turns out this stranger doesn’t deserve it, but I need the selfish comfort of thinking I’m not alone in this crappy situation.

“You don’t know anything?” I ask. “Nothing at all? Have you been blindfolded the whole time you’ve been here? Wherever here is,” I add, muttering to myself. The fluttering stirrings of curiosity surprises me, but I can’t help inquiring, “How does that work? I mean, what about…eating? Bathing? Going to the bathroom?”

My questions come fast, hurled out at him without even giving him a chance to answer before I ask the next. But I want to know; I’ve never given much thought before to how somebody would manage everyday, innocuous tasks while wearing a blindfold.

A soft grunting noise accompanies the rustle of him shifting around. I didn’t hear any sort of metallic rattling or clanging as he moved, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t caged thesame as I. On the other hand, my paranoia that he might be playing some sort of game with me still runs rampant.

“I’ll tell you everything I can, I promise,” he says. “But first… Why don’t we start at the basics? What’s your name?” After a momentary pause, he hurriedly adds, “I guess you don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to. But if you don’t, just know I’ll probably start calling you ‘dude’ or I’ll make up a name for you.”

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